PHPs are essentially Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) for doctors. The vast majority of people know little or nothing about Physician Health Programs (PHPs).

Physician Health Programs (PHPs) are being called the “gold-standard” for EAPs. Claims of unparalleled success are being used to promote PHPs to other populations as a “replicable model of recovery.”

Drs. Robert Dupont and Gregory Skipper are promoting PHPs as “A New Paradigm for Long-Term Recovery” claiming an 80% success rate in doctors.

An article entitled “What Might Have Saved Philip Seymour Hoffman,” claims PHPs “ought to be considered models for our citizenry” and the “best evidence-based addiction treatment system we have going.” The author repeats the 80% success rate for doctors and claims Philip Seymour Hoffman might still be alive if he had been treated using the PHP model.

This study is the cornerstone of the “PHP-blueprint.” It is the very foundation on which everything else is based, a Magnum opus used to lay claim to supremacy that has been endlessly repeated and rehashed in a plethora of self-promotion and treatment community blandishment.

To date there has been no academic analysis of the “PHP-Blueprint.” There has been no Cochrane type analysis or critical review. There has been no opposition to its findings or conclusions which are paraded as fact and truth without challenge or question and there is a general lack of concern from those both within and outside the medical profession.

The Expansion of Physician Health Programs (PHPs) to Other Populations

1. Although these programs claim to help doctors they may actually be harming many and contributing to suicide.

2. The plan is to greatly expand these programs to other populations and you could be next.

In 2012 Robert Dupont delivered the keynote speech at the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association annual conference and described a “new paradigm” for addiction and substance abuse treatment and proposed expansion of this paradigm to other populations including workplace, healthcare, and schools.

It is therefore critical that the “PHP-blueprint” be examined using critical reasoning and evidence base. All of this needs to be assessed in terms of legitimacy and intent.

It is non-randomized and non-blinded rendering the evidence for effectiveness of the PHP treatment model over any other treatment model (including no treatment) poor from a scientific perspective. The study contains multiple flaws in both reasoning (type I and type II errors) and statistical analysis that render its conclusions invalid.

In addition the impact of undeclared but substantial financial conflicts-of-interest (including funding by drug testing and addiction treatment industries) and personal ideological biases (including personal 12-step recovery from addictions) in the authors of this study also needs to be considered.

Moreover the misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis of addiction in physicians in this paradigm incentivized by lucrative self-referral dollars for expensive 90-day treatment programs is a significant factor.

False Endpoints and High Mortality Rate

The mean age of the 904 physicians was 44.1 years. They report that 24 of 102 physicians were transferred and lost to follow “left care with no apparent referral.”

What happened to them? These are physicians with multiple identifiers (state license, DEA, UPIN, etc) not transient drifters.

Of the 802 left in the program they report 155 failed to complete the contract. Of these, 48 involuntarily stopped or had their license revoked and 22 died with 6 of those being suicides. This study is looking at defined endpoints while being monitored so 6 killed themselves while being actively monitored by the program. But what about the 24 that left with no apparent referral? It is unlikely the just left on a whim. There must have been some precipitant event.

More importantly what happened to those 48 who were reported to the Medical Board for noncompliance and had their licenses revoked–that would be the critical time when this population would be at most risk for completing a suicide. That would be when hope was lost and the coerced physician, knowing that the fight was over, would take that step.

The outcomes they used were the last reported status of the PHP participant enrolled in the program. Measuring success of program completion in doctors compared to the general population is meaningless as the short-term outcomes are quite different in terms of the external consequences imposed. The consequence of not completing a PHP is the invariably career ending. So what happened to the 24 of who “left care with no apparent referral,” the 85 who “voluntarily stopped or retired,” and the 48 who “involuntarily stopped or license revoked.”

Whether you leave a PHP voluntarily, involuntarily, or with no apparent referral it is the end game and your career is over. Comparing this to other populations where the consequences of failing to complete the program are not so final is inappropriate. Claiming superiority over programs with a 40% success rate is unfounded because for most of those people the consequences are not so final and may mean nothing more than an increase in testing frequency.

The big question is what happened to the 157 physicians who left or stopped? How many of them killed themselves. With an average age of 44 there were 6 reported suicides 22 deaths, and another 157 no longer doctors. I would venture to say the number of suicides is a lot higher than they claim. But using the last recorded PHP status as the final outcome obfuscates this.

Due to the severity of the consequences a 20% failure rate is quite concerning. This is of particular concern because many doctors (if not most) monitored by PHPs are not addicts.

Imposed 12-step ideology and use of non-FDA Approved Drug and Alcohol Testing

As noted above, PHPs are essentially Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) for doctors. Most EAPs, however, were developed in the presence of trade unions and other organizations working on behalf of the best interests of the employee. This collaborative effort led to EAPs that were more or less “organizationally just” with procedural fairness and transparency.

No such organizations exist for doctors. Due to the absence of oversight and accountability PHPs have been able to use non-FDA approved laboratory developed tests of unknown validity on doctors without any opposition.

The distinction between professional and private life as a fundamental value of our society and the importance of this boundary was also upheld by these groups.

In the PHP paradigm no procedural fairness or transparency exists and the boundary between professional and private life has eroded.

PHPs impose 12-step ideology on all doctors referred to these programs. State Medical Boards enforce this in violation of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment yet there is little recourse for doctors as they are threatened with non-compliance and loss of licensure.

Selling the PHP Paradigm

The use of 12-step is most likely not ideologically driven but profit driven. Abstinence based 12-step programs justify the use of frequent drug and alcohol testing with ongoing lifelong assessment and treatment. As with drug-courts, PHPs provide a lucrative model to the drug and alcohol testing, assessment and treatment industry.

The plan to expand this to other populations is outlined in the ASAM White Paper.

This concerns all of us. The first step needs to be a critical appraisal ofSetting the Standard for Recovery: Physicians’ Health Programs, the foundation of their claims of an 80% success rate and a conflict-of-interest analysis of its authors. The legitimacy of the study and its claims needs to be questioned.

It does not take a Cochrane review to see that the emperor has no clothes. This is not difficult. It is straightforward and simple.

As an illegitimate and irrational authority it is necessary that this opinion remain unchallenged. We need to challenge it.

Historical, political, economic and social analysis reveals that the “PHP-blueprint” is a false-construct built on circumnavigation and obfuscation. An evidence-based scrutiny of the literature would reveal it to be invalid and of little probative value.

But if nobody speaks up it is inevitable that they will expand the “PHP blueprint” to other employee assistance programs and schools.

This is not just about doctors. You too are at risk for coercion, control, conformity and forced adherence to a lifetime of abstinence and 12-step indoctrination and if you do not speak up now it won’t be a risk but a certainty.

I am very sympathetic. There is so much corruption in medicine, and doctors in positions of power (too often with serious narcissism problems, which is what drew them to the positions in the first place) seem to take pleasure in measuring their power in relation to how much damage they can do to another.

Despite not being a physician, I have read many posts on your blog and I am horrified by what I have read. While I believe that physicians are being treated inhumanely by the PHPs, I do not think that the source of the problem is unique to their experience. In fact, I think the basis for this ideological takeover of “health” began in the 1980s when modern psychology became the predominant belief system (religion) in American society.

Many new ideas, based on the personal writings of psychologists, were introduced at that time. Their purpose was to tell us how to best live our lives. In order to get the public to buy into their agenda, the proposed ideas were formalized by pseudo-scientific “studies,” allegedly “proving” their worth.

For instance, can you remember anyone claiming to have had an “unhealthy relationship” in the 1970s? Not likely. In the 1970s no one had “relationships.” We had relatives (a word we can no longer use), friends, classmates, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, colleagues, acquaintances, etc. And now what do we have? Relationships. Every connection we have to another human is now termed a relationship – family relationships, intimate relationships, work relationships, and so on. Now that everything is a relationship, the word has lost its meaning, and so has the specificity of human connections. Unfortunately, this change ushered in an era which can be defined by the imposition of superficiality on things which were once substantive.

I believe that living in such a superficial environment has led to nearly universal self-absorption and apathy. That may explain why so few people appear to be interested in your message, despite the fact that ignoring it will cause enormous harm to them in the future.

It is not only those with substance abuse or psychological problems who will be affected by the Religion of Psychology movement. Everyone will lose their rights and their freedom. But since most people have become stupid sheep, blindly following along instead of thinking for themselves and standing up for their rights, it will be difficult to prevent this loss.

Young people used to be the ones who championed causes. Youth and idealism went hand in hand. That was until political correctness made independent thought a “sin.” Like relationship theory, political correctness tells us who we are, what to think, and how to act. There is no room for individuality, no room for questioning, no room for discussion. This is very sad. It will not make for a more humane world. Instead, it will create a world where uniformity and blind conformity are mandatory. What was once life will be mere existence. And what was once meaningful will be perfunctory.

The leaders of the PHPs, and others like them, as overlords of the realm of modern psychology will force their religion on the world and will obtain control of every aspect of our lives in the name of health. This trend has driven me away from conventional medicine and has made me a loner. I have, however, found some hope from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Not only is he advocating for a more humane and equal society, and telling people to stand up to the one percent, but he has managed to get a lot of young people to support him.

I do not expect Sanders to win the nomination. But, I am holding out hope that the young people who agree with his message will take up his cause on their own and will fight for their future.

Perhaps you could appeal to those young people to join you in your fight. You would do well to join forces since you are both fighting for human rights and for a future which will still contain Humanity.

The suppression of information and avoidance of key facts and cherry picking confirmatory distortion attempting to make the data fit the hypothesis that Bernie Sanders isn’t a contender the media is presenting is reminiscent of these bastards. Wait until he wins New. York are they still going to say it’s just a psychological boost and the math isn’t there?

You’re right about how the media and information brokers are handling their “presentation” of Sanders’ campaign. He has more support than they are willing to admit, from people representing all walks of life who support him because they believe in his message. They want a better world to live in, not more empty promises.

I am planning to give this whole situation more thought, but I only have a few minutes right now. Still, I wanted to point out to you that the FSPHP has shown themselves to be very much like your description of them. Somehow, they have managed to remove the documents from almost every link you have posted to their website from your blog including the one above for the “National Physician Health Program Blueprint Study Publications List.” Clicking on this link leads to a “Page Not Found” error, so no one who isn’t approved by them can review the blueprint information. If their data is valid, why are they hiding it from the public?

Undeterred by their efforts, I located a copy of the aforementioned blueprint document elsewhere; however, if you want readers of this post to review it, you should upload a copy to your blog so that they can download it directly from you.

Nonetheless, it seems that the video you embedded on your post by DuPont (aka: “the voice of addiction medicine”) isn’t going well on attracting the attention of YouTube viewers (140 views, votes: 2 negative and 1 positive).